


Misguided ghost

by beloniika



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Gen, Haunting, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-28 17:58:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2741801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beloniika/pseuds/beloniika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minseok moves in a new house but his 'roommate' doesn't quite want him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misguided ghost

**Author's Note:**

> warning: mention of suicide

The house was rather big for only one person, Minseok had to admit it, but he fell in love with it at first sight: two stories plus attic, neat porch up front, wide garden around for Huo Guo. Yes, he’ll live there no matter what, thinking ahead of time and imagining his future with the person who will dare to spend the rest of their life with him, till death tears them apart, in that same house.  
The professionally cordial woman of the estate agency was waiting for him at the door; he jogged his way towards her and they bowed in greetings before entering. The realtor illustrated Minseok all the features of the house, from the spacious and light rooms to the quality of the building materials and also the facilities in the neighborhood.  
It was already furnished, there was even a small piano, Minseok noticed, and it wasn’t half as bad as what he imagined: he thought there were more granny-like cupboards and doilies everywhere, but it was pretty modern yet classic.  
“I take it,” Minseok affirmed with a broad smile, taking the contract the agent was handing him and signing it without a second thought.

~°~

  
The following morning Minseok parked his ratty car in front of his new home, starting to unload the few things he brought to get familiar with the house before moving in for good. He’s already planned it: pillow, sheets, notepad, ball and dog for a week, roaming the house to make a list of what to save and what to get rid of before forcing his friends to help him move the rest of his stuff in, and finally throwing an inauguration party.  
With the keys the estate agent gave him the previous day, Minseok opened the white front door and got in, Huo Guo trotting ahead of him. Leaving his duffel bag against the cabinet at the entrance, he inhaled deeply and looked around satisfied before entering the kitchen; he noticed just in that moment that the fridge was obviously empty and ordered Huo Guo not to destroy everything while he was away.

~°~

  
He watched the chubby cheeked man rushing outside, while the dog woofed lazily at the closing door before turning to him, head cocked to the side.  
He disappeared.

~°~

  
Minseok opened the door as quickly as he could with an armful of groceries (beer, icecream, poptarts, milk, ramen, dog food), breathing in relief when he saw Huo Guo hadn’t thrown the whole house down.  
“Good boy,” he patted the dog’s head and put the grocery bag on the kitchen table. He took his hoodie off and ungraciously abandoned it on the chair back before putting the food away, but a single bark made him turn.  
“What, Huo Guo?” Minseok asked the dog, who was looking at the table from the door. The man looked as well and noticed how his hoodie was now neatly arranged on the chair: a bit baffled, because he was pretty sure he hadn’t gone out of his way to put his hoodie on the chair back like that, he eventually shrugged it off.  
“Ok let’s do it,” he said out loud to the house, ready to take a new tour and put the things he didn’t like or looked too old to be still good to the side. Armed with his notepad, where he very simply scribbled ‘yes’ and ‘no’ on top separated by a vertical line all the way to the end of the page, he started his inspection: he opened and closed every cupboard present in the kitchen, tested the couch, checked every furniture in the living room, gave an affectionate pat to the wooden surface of the piano, deciding to play it later.  
He moved upstairs and, as soon as he stepped inside the master bedroom, he was hit by the bone-chilling coldness that filled it: everything was a big no-no, from the wallpaper to the furniture (too vintage for his liking) and Minseok noted down and even circled ‘bedroom’ in the ‘no’ column, feeling instantly a bit better, not to mention when he closed the bedroom’s door behind himself.  
All in all the two spare rooms and the bathrooms (downstairs and upstairs) were good too: he could sum the whole inspection with “ _burn_ those damned flowery curtains”, “change the master bedroom, thankyouverymuch” and “repaint every wall”. Minseok could call himself satisfied of the purchase and of the status of the house. He dared to say it was all good, only the cupboards needed some elbow oil to get rid of the dust and a passage with the screwdriver to secure the doors, and a coat of paint on the walls wouldn’t hurt. The flowery curtains must disappear, though, and he should check for drafts in the bedrooms…  
Between the bathroom and one of the spare rooms there was the door to the attic, that Minseok was pretty sure to remember the estate agent closed after she explained where it led to and showed him the narrow stairs.  
Minseok gulped loudly and flicked the light switch on, carefully taking a step a time to get in the attic; once there, he couldn’t help but wonder who was the previous owner of the house and why they left some boxes behind. The boxes were exactly under the round window Minseok wanted to open to let the stale air out, so he had to move them a bit to the side, but when he reached for the dark sheet that covered the window he made a small box fall with more noise than necessary, or maybe it was just the uneasiness he’s always felt in relatively cramped places. Jumping for the sudden clatter, Minseok looked suspiciously at the contents that scattered on the floor: football memorabilia, guitar picks and even a Rubix cube were now spread on the dusty wooden boards, the few rays of the sun filtering through the now bare window catching the colorful little squares on the cube. Minseok picked it up and chuckled, mindful of the countless times he’d tried to solve one without succeeding.  
Diligently tidying up and putting the box back in its place, Minseok promised himself to check the content of the boxes in case there was something useful, since nobody had reclaimed them before the house was sold. He called it a wrap when his stomach rumbled and decided to invite himself over to some friends and hang out, he’ll check the boxes in the attic later that day.

~°~

  
“Aaaah, I’m gonna explode,” Minseok exclaimed after devouring two full dishes of the awesome food his friend Yixing had cooked, patting his belly to stress the concept.  
“Well, get out of my house, then, I don’t wanna shovel human flesh and noodles off the furniture,” Wufan deadpanned while retrieving the empty dishes; Yixing giggled airily by his side.  
“Aww I know you love me, WuYiFan…” Minseok cooed, winking an eye at Yixing.  
Wufan waved him off and sat back at the table.  
“How’s your new place?” he finally questioned.  
“Oh, it’s awesome, I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. It’s also still in good shape, piping and furniture and all. I just need some fresh paint, discard those godawful curtains and completely change the bedroom…”  
“So when do you need help to move in?” Yixings asked innocently, earning himself a glare from Wufan, who perfectly knew Minseok’s antics and how much a profiteer he could be at times.  
Minseok’s eyes gleamed in ecstasy, “I thought you’d have never asked,” he mockingly awed.  
“It’s not a marriage proposal, Minseok, quit it with your crap and tell us when do you need our help,” Wufan said resigned.  
“Uhm…maybe you can pass by tomorrow already to help me getting rid of what I don’t need,” Minseok suggested.  
“Okay,” is Wufan’s sighed affirmation, along with Yixing’s nod.  
“See you around noon, then?” the guest asked standing up to leave.  
“Yeah, okay, see ya tomorrow,” Yixing smiled and led Minseok to the door.  
“Thank you. Bring something to eat!” Minseok shouted halfway through the stairs.

~°~

  
He watched with an eyebrow raised as the man paced back and forth in the living room while talking on the phone, how his face scrunched up when he laughed.  
“Hey Zitao, I need…”  
“Hey Joonmyeon, listen…”  
“Jongdae! My man…”  
He shook his head at his living roommate and his enthusiasm. If he only knew…  
But wait, this man _can_ know…He quickly moved to the attic and concentrated to make all the boxes fall.  
“SHIT!” came a scared curse two floors downstairs, further muffled by the thuds of the boxes and their contents still falling all over the floor.  
Silence filled the house as he waited for the other man to come to assess the damage; a satisfied grin appeared on his face as he heard the hesitant steps of the new tenant up the stairs, broadening when he saw a pale and tense face peek in the attic’s door.  
The man visibly and noisily gulped as he stared at the mess, stuttering a “Call you later,” in the phone before cautiously tiptoeing towards the chaos that made him jump out of his skin.

~°~

  
What the FUCK was that? Minseok’s heart was beating rapidly, he totally wasn’t expecting the boxes to fall, he was sure they were in secure piles.  
Breathing slowly to calm down a bit, he crouched down and checked the content of the boxes, something that he was going to do sooner or later.  
Notepads everywhere, he flipped through one and saw musical notes with occasional words (lyrics?) all over the pages: he collected them in an empty box and made a mental note to read through them later. And one box was done.  
Books went in two separated boxes: Minseok patiently passed through all the titles to know what to keep and what not.  
Prehistoric MC and CD player with a cassette and a CD each in them were on top of quite a collection of music; the empty cases of the cassette and the disc forgotten in their devices had titles of songs neatly written on them (they looked like two mixtapes). The whole bunch joined a set of new guitar strings in yet another “saved box”, same fate for musicals in VHS and a few other movies.  
Oh, the box of the first day: football knick knacks, guitar picks (but where was the guitar?) and the Rubix cube. Minseok found himself smiling a bit and putting them aside in their box.  
Clothes: awfully tight jeans and V-neck t-shirts contrasted with the oversized sweaters and varsity jackets. He could give them away to some charity or something.  
Silverware, dishes, all that crap: he didn’t need complete services of fine china, he was perfectly fine with those few chipped dishes he owned and rarely used because he mostly ordered from the take away,eating directly from the cartons.  
Toys: cars, balls, robots, plushies were the same of Minseok’s childhood, he almost shed a happy tear reminiscing his carefree years when he saw them.  
Once Minseok was satisfied, he stood up and dusted his hands and knees, looking around to see if there was anything left. That’s when he spotted a dark trunk at the far end of the attic.  
He tried the locks but they were, of course, locked, and it was no use pulling or pushing or tugging, they just weren’t going to open any time soon– Minseok rummaged through the boxes again to look for a key, but he wasn’t lucky and was hence forced to wait for Jongdae to come over with his tools. Sighing fondly, he stood up again and returned downstairs, distractedly eating a ramen soup and placing himself in front of the TV that, you know, induces sleep.

~°~

  
He stared at the intruder all night with hard eyes: it was irritating how at ease he already looked despite the good frights he played on him, let alone that dog of his that was smearing the whole house with its icky drool.  
He eventually rolled his eyes and turned the TV off, then stalked away.

~°~

  
Minseok woke up fairly early, the familiar kinks of sleeping on a couch making themselves known and feeling almost more tired than when he went to bed, thanks to noises coming from the attic–he almost pissed his pants but forced himself to go check _again_ , not finding anything at all.  
He wasn’t at all in the mood to move in, that day, but his friends were coming over in a couple of hours just for him. To keep himself busy while waiting for them, Minseok retrieved the few still empty boxes from the attic and packed them with any knickknack left from the previous owners he saw around, the garbage, the damned curtains.  
…Okay, this took him barely an hour: what could he do while waiting for his friends? Wufan and Yixing were coming with food, while Jongdae, Joonmyeon and Zitao had to stop at his apartment to get his boxes before getting there.  
Looking around for inspiration, Minseok’s eyes trailed back to the small piano in the corner between the empty bookshelves and the fireplace. While lingering his fingertips over the dusty wood of the instrument, he suddenly remembered what he dreamed during that almost sleepless night: somebody was playing a really sad song on the piano, unknown to him but hauntingly beautiful; of the pianist, only his lean figure and the back of his blond head were visible from Minseok’s position.  
Minseok’s hand automatically went to dust off the stool and he sat in front of the keyboard, determined to figure out the melody of his dream.

~°~

  
His eyes almost popped out of their sockets. Did this man really dare to replay the song HE composed? Even _trying to sing along_? Not even the melodic voice of the stranger was enough to calm him down, he was too mad at the affront.  
A sudden rage hit him and the temperature immediately dropped.

~°~

  
Two things hit Minseok at once: the sudden coldness of the room and the overwhelming sadness and passion and broken dreams seeping through the keys, sensations so intense that he flinched away and had to steady himself against the marble shelf of the fireplace, making the stool fall in the process.  
“What the...” he breathed out, unable to wrap his mind around what just happened. Stepping backwards, Minseok kept eyeing the piano warily as he went to look for the thermostat.

~°~

  
He walked towards the abandoned piano. It looked so tempting.  
He wanted to play.  
He wanted to play again.  
He wanted to keep playing. Forever.  
He felt the man was returning, confusion transpiring through every pore.  
He vanished.

~°~

  
Minseok came back from the storeroom below the stairs, where he tapped the thermostat’s screen. He flopped on the couch, dumbfounded, but at least the temperature was back to normal. He didn’t feel like playing anymore, though, and took Huo Guo out in the lawn in front of the house. Minseok didn’t pay attention to it, but something heavy lifted off his chest as soon as he stepped outside.  
Playing catch with the dog made the time fly, and soon Wufan, Yixing and Zitao arrived at Minseok’s house.  
“Hey guys!” he exclaimed, “Thanks for coming!”  
“No problem, gege,” Zitao crooned, “Nice house! So you are settling in, uh? I can already see you in the future with your significant other on your dear rocking chairs on the porch and recalling the good ol’ times,” he smirked.  
“Ha. Funny,” Minseok playfully glared, shaking the branch Huo Guo had to fetch in front of his friend’s nose, “I’ll find my matching soul and you’ll see. Just wait.”  
Minseok was used to be the laughing stock of the group for being the only one still single, while Wufan had Yixing, Zitao had Baekhyun and Jongdae had Joonmyeon. Sure, he still had some success with people, but his stories didn’t last more than a few weeks; he still had the plate his friends made for him when he broke up with Jongdae, of all people, back in college: relationship that lasted for a good portion of their junior and freshman year respectively, definitely his longest story (to think that the idea of giving him a plate was Jongdae’s, that cheeky bastard).  
“But wait…didn’t you have to go with Jongdae and Joonmyeon to my apartment?” Minseok cocked an eyebrow.  
“Change of plans, I got the paint and these guys kindly gave me a lift,” Zitao pointed at Wufan and Yixing, who lived three blocks away from the hardware shop close to Zitao’s place.  
“Only because you called us, pleading to give you a lift,” Wufan retorted bitingly.  
“What if we weren’t headed here?” Yixing chuckled.  
“Oh, but I knew you were,” Zitao said easily, “We all know Minseok,” he grinned. The three men looked at said guy and nodded mockingly gravely.  
“Come on in, we’ll wait for Jongdae and Joonmyeon inside,” Minseok rolled his eyes and led the way to his new house. Right before he closed the door, a car haphazardly parked in the free spot behind Wufan’s car; a muttered string of _ohgodohgodohgod_ caught Minseok’s ear and he returned outside in time to see Joonmyeon and Jongdae stumble out of the vehicle, the former looking more pale than ever.  
“Why do I let you drive, _why_ ,” Joonmyeon bemoaned, looking on the verge of puking his guts out.  
“Because you’re a slowpoke that pays too much attention to the road safety,” Jongdae quipped.  
“You almost hit an old man!”  
“Feeling sympathy for those of your same species? Oh,hey Minseok,” Jongdae greeted with a devious grin, followed by the tired smile of Joonmyeon.  
Minseok snorted and gestured them to get in. The company was finally complete.

~°~

  
He stared almost outraged at the bunch of guys that had literally invaded his house, who were talking loudly, telling nasty stories, eating messily in the living room. It wasn’t like he was a neat-freak, but they were _intruders_ ––yes, even the man who legitimately bought the house.

~°~

  
“So, where do we start from?” Joonmyeon asked, stirring on the couch.  
“Uhm…let’s split,” Minseok decided, “Jongdae, Wufan and Yixing in the kitchen, the cupboards need to be cleaned and secured and the walls need to be repainted. Joonmyeon, Zitao and I will do the living room, then we’ll decide what to do upstairs.”  
“We’re gonna get the tools and the tins of paint,” Jongdae and Zitao chorused, heading to the cars.  
When they were all set, the move could begin: they fiddled with the couch to make it pass through the door, brought boxes and furniture outside, did minimal interventions to needy pieces of furniture, dusted and cleaned everything.  
It’d have been an awesome group work, if inexplicable events didn’t fuck their efforts up.  
Paint cans spilling by themselves, leaving puddles of paint on the freshly cleaned floor.  
Drawers and cupboard doors closing on the fingers of the unlucky guy that was working on that particular piece of furniture.  
The main door closing by itself.  
Minseok’s friends were growing frustrated, seeing all their hard work vanishing under their eyes.  
“What. The fuck. Is going on,” Wufan finally voiced everybody’s thoughts.  
“I-I really…” Minseok started, but his friends’ stern and tired faces made him spill everything out.  
“I think there’s a ghost.”

~°~

  
He was enjoying the scene from the stairs, comfortably propped against the handrail.

~°~

  
Wufan, Yixing, Zitao, Jongdae and Joonmyeon were looking at Minseok like he was nuts.  
“A ghost,” Wufan repeated blankly.  
Minseok nodded silently. Silence filled the living room after his statement.  
Wufan pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, “When were you going to tell us?”  
“I don’t know! I thought there was some rational explication to anything that has happened in these couple of days, but with you here everything has gotten worse,” Minseok whined.  
“So now it’s our fault?” Zitao frowned.  
“No, no, I didn’t mean that!” Minseok groaned. Nobody said anything for a few pregnant minutes.  
“I know it’s gonna sound nuts, but what about organizing a séance?” Jongdae suggested carefully. Next to him, Zitao was visibly shaking, he’s never dealt well with scary stuff, he couldn’t even finish watching The Ring.  
“You can sit it out, Tao, we know how you feel about ghosts,” Wufan prodded comfortingly, Minseok agreeing with a curt nod.  
“No, it’s fine, I want to help gege,” Zitao’s words and face were resolute, but everybody knew better.  
During their conversation, Jongdae had already googled for instructions on his phone, “I suppose you don’t own an Ouija board, do you?” he asked Minseok.  
“Uhm, no.”  
“Apparently writing the alphabet and key words on a piece of paper and using a glass as planchette works just as fine,” Jongdae explained further.  
The older male gulped and stood up to fetch his notepad, a candle and a glass, then scribbled the alphabet, numbers from 0 to 9, ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘goodbye’ as shown in the photo on Jongdae’s phone. Once Wufan and Joonmyeon had nailed boards on the windows to make the room as dark as possible, the candle was lit and the impromptu Ouija board was set in the middle of the table, the guys sat on the floor and threw side glances at the room.  
Minseok cleared his throat, “Let’s get it over with,” he stated and lingered his fingers on the cold surface of the glass. One by one, the others copied his gesture hesitantly and let out a long breath in unison.  
“Is anybody here?”

~°~

  
Were they really having a séance, expecting him to show himself? He snickered.

~°~

  
Those three words felt heavy in the thick atmosphere of the room, tension palpable and anticipation graving on the men’s shoulders.  
Seconds passed and nothing happened.  
“Is anybody here?” Minseok repeated, tongue heavy in his mouth.  
The light flickered on and off before switching off completely, startling everybody. Someone, more than one, let out an undignified squeak.  
“W-Who are you?” the self-proclaimed medium plied.  
“L-U-H-A-N,” the glass finally spelled.  
The men looked at each other wide eyed, excited and petrified at the same time.  
“Why are you doing all these pranks?”  
“M-Y-H-O-U-S-E”  
“We can live together amicably, you know?” Minseok attempted a chuckle and peace offer.“NO”  
Everybody tensed.  
“If you have any unresolved business, we could help you,” Minseok proposed. He didn’t get a reply for a full minute, before the glass moved again.  
“M-U-S-I-C”  
“We aren’t going anywhere with this, it’s fucking slow,” Minseok whispered, earning a deserved kick from Wufan.  
“T-H-A-N-K-S” the ‘board’ spelled again. Everybody giggled, even Minseok.  
“Sorry,” the man apologized sheepishly, mindful of what he had heard about ‘playing with spirits’ – don’t piss them off.

~°~

  
He hated admitting it, but his ‘roommate’ was right, they’ll never conclude a damn this way.  
He wondered if the guy with the slightly parted lips and dreamy look could be a good host…

~°~

  
Yixing sniggered, “Okay, where were we?”  
Everybody at the table turned towards him. Yixing looked a bit unfocused and his features were contorted in a bitterly playful grimace.  
“Yixing?” Wufan called.  
“Oh, so that’s his name? Thank him on my behalf, later,” Yixing blushed faintly, not totally visible in the candle light.  
“Yixing?!” Wufan was going to reach for his boyfriend, but Minseok admonished, “Don’t take your fingers off the glass!”  
Wufan kept looking at Yixing worriedly, but did as asked.  
“I’m sorry but I had to, or we’d still be here for next year’s Christmas,” Yixing voiced Luhan’s words, “So, are you really sure you want to help me?”  
Five heads nodded in agreement.  
“Thank you very much. But first, I think I have to tell you who the hell I am,” Yixing-Luhan conceded.

~°~

  
My name is Luhan and I committed suicide at the end of January 2008, three months shy to my eighteenth birthday. I slit my wrists in my parents’ bedroom, for a more shocking discovery and to make my father pay for crushing my dreams.  
I had two big passions, football and music, but they clashed with the plans my father made for me: I had to go to the best university and study to become a lawyer  
I didn’t go along particularly well with my mother either, but we were both under the old man’s iron fist and that was the base of our little complicity. She’d teach me how to play the piano while he was at work and even managed, holy woman, to convince my father to allow me to have a guitar when I got into my teen years – you know how things work, you want to play a cool instrument when you’re that age.  
He eventually gave in and bought a guitar for my fourteenth birthday, snagging from me the promise to get better grades and to still have school as my priority, not “worthless music, Luhan, because you don’t want to be a worthless man, am I right?”, as he always said.  
Starting from that day, I’d been scribbling chords over chords on tons of notepads, practicing the guitar and mumbling lyrics that I thought could fit instead of doing homework, staying up until late at night to catch up with them and make my father think I was totally focused on school.  
The time to think of my academical future, picking what college to apply for, arrived too early for my taste. I already knew my fate, but dared to put my foot down and asked to attend a college where I would have been able to major in Music…I shouldn’t have. My father shouted in my face, saying that I wasn’t going anywhere strumming in some filthy bar for a few cents a show, that he was working hard to afford the best schools for his son when he wasn’t able to attend them, that I was ungrateful for what he was doing for me and his efforts to assure me a steady future. He fled to my room and grabbed my guitar, but it was no use to plead him to leave me the instrument, he didn’t fall for my fake promises to become a lawyer, he was scared to see his own dreams slipping away from his grasp.

_“Son of a bitch,” Minseok hissed._

I followed my father in the attic, where he locked the guitar in the black trunk in the corner and broke the keys in the locks; he then dragged me downstairs and closed me in my bedroom, claiming I wasn’t getting out until I made up my mind.  
I was glad he didn’t break the guitar and the thought that I’d have been able to retrieve it, breaking the locks with my father’s tools, gave me hope. I was already planning my runaway, but I made a huge mistake: I underestimated him. My father locked his tools away and I’ve never been able to find the key, after he finally let me out.  
During my forced stay in my room, I thought about finding a job to earn money enough to buy another guitar, but my father would’ve surely locked it away as well, if not broken or burnt it. I thought about running away, but he wasn’t going to give up on me easily…I was so mad at him, I wanted to make him pay.  
He put his dreams in his son, so I decided to break them killing myself. One day, when my father was still at work and my mother went to visit a friend of her, I took one of my father’s razor blades and went in their bedroom, lied on their bed and cut my wrists. I don’t know what happened next, I just passed out for hemorrhage and I wasn’t able to see my father’s face when he saw me; I woke up something like a month later in a silent, empty house, my parents nowhere to be seen.  
I’ve been stuck in this house since then, every attempt to get my guitar back was vane, so I found myself haunting this house. At first I didn’t scare the inhabitants on purpose, I was just trying to feel alive again with my music playing the piano during the night; four years aren’t that long a time, but the ghastly solitude almost drove me insane. I was blinded by my rabid retrieval of my guitar, I actually spooked them with the intention of just being left alone with my regrets and don’t let them touch my instruments.

~°~

  
“I’m sorry I scared you, but whenever I tried to contact the past inhabitants to have their help they left right then and there, so I thought it’d have been the same with you and thus tried to scare you away,” Luhan apologized. A few tears were running down Yixing’s face while the ghost recounted his past.  
Minseok, Wufan, Zitao, Jongdae and Joonmyeon were looking at Yixing-Luhan totally upset and sad for this boy who ended his life at such a young age because he saw his dreams vanish under the father’s pressure.  
Minseok was the first to recover, “Jongdae, do you have the pincers with you?” he whispered, not wanting to break the atmosphere.  
Jongdae nodded silently and stood up, breaking the contact with the glass, to get his tools belt from the kitchen counter. When he returned in the living room, Minseok was on his feet as well, while the others ended the session –Wufan closed the ‘board’ in case some other spirit wanted in– and Yixing was still possessed by Luhan.  
“Let’s open that fucking trunk,” Minseok stated and led the way to the attic.  
The men climbed up two stair cases and reached the attic, trunk still in its place in the far end of the room. Jongdae approached it with the pincers and with some effort he managed to snap the locks open; Minseok and Luhan were right behind him, breath caught in their throats. When Jongdae opened the trunk, Luhan fell on his knees and started crying, with Minseok right at his side hugging him comfortingly.  
The guitar had been waiting patiently for Luhan for four years.  
Luhan threw Yixing’s arms around Minseok and cried in his shoulder, thankful beyond words.  
“Thank you, thank you, thank you…All of you,” he chocked out. Minseok patted Yixing’s dark locks imagining it was Luhan’s hair and whispered, “Don’t mention it.”  
When Luhan finally calmed down, he carefully took his guitar from the trunk and heavy tears fell on its glossy surface.  
“…Would you like to play us something?” Minseok asked shyly.  
Luhan looked at him like Minseok just told him he won the lottery. Luhan sat on the floor and with a lapful of guitar he started strumming to remember how to play; when he was ready, he closed the eyes and Yixing’s fingers ran smoothly on the strings.  
Before Luhan started playing, Jongdae snooped in the trunk and found a photo album that he showed to Minseok, who sat next to him.  
“Hey man, look at this.”  
Minseok took the album and flipped through the pages, spotting the blond mop of hair of his dream recurring in most of the photos, round glossy eyes gracing the young face.  
“So this is Luhan,” he whispered, and when he looked up at Yixing, his friend disappeared in front of his eyes to be substituted by the image of a thin boy with a faint aura around him; Luhan was fully concentrated but smiling, at peace with a guitar in hand while strumming the same melody played in Minseok’s dream.  
When Luhan finished the song and Minseok blinked, Yixing slumped on the floor and Luhan’s ghost was a little more corporeal. Wufan rushed to Yixing’s side and tried to shake him awake.  
“Don’t worry for him, he’ll recover soon,” Luhan smiled softly, then turned to Minseok and Jongdae, “Thank you for getting my guitar back, I can finally go now.”  
Jongdae nodded and excused himself, giving Minseok and Luhan some privacy.  
“I know we haven’t had a real friendship, but I’m gonna miss you,” Minseok said with a watery smile.  
“I’m sorry I made you think you were going nuts, especially because you helped me in the end, and I’m gonna miss you too. I’m sure we’d have been friends, if…you know,” Luhan trailed off and blushed, averting his gaze in embarrassment.  
It was instinctive: Minseok launched himself at Luhan to hug him goodbye. He was surprised to be able to feel Luhan real between his arms, almost warm when he hugged Minseok back.  
“Goodbye, guys,” Luhan stated while silent tears rolled down his pale cheeks. His pearlish features slowly vanished in front of Minseok and his friends, and finally he disappeared.  
Minseok stared at the spot where Luhan was standing just a moment ago with hot tears falling uncontrollably for what felt like forever. It was Wufan’s relieved gasp that made him turn.  
“Yixing!” everybody yelled, relieved to have their friend back.  
“What happened?” Yixing asked hazily.  
“You…you were possessed,” Wufan explained as tactful as possible.  
“I was…Luhan, where’s Luhan?” Yixing sat up and looked around.  
“He’s gone. He left said to thank you,” Minseok smiled, still unable to stop his tears.  
“Oh. Then what happened to him?”  
The other five looked at each other.  
“Let’s go downstairs,” Wufan suggested, “we’ll recount everything on the couch with a beer in hand.”

~°~

  
“So he’s gone. Are you relieved now?”

“…No.”


End file.
